From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Nic James Ferrier Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Saving markup formats Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2007 00:40:31 +0100 Message-ID: <87r6o7ecnk.fsf@kanga.tapsellferrier.co.uk> References: <871wgi9jzb.fsf@jidanni.org> <87odjlwpu1.fsf@jurta.org> <87ir9r1m99.fsf@jurta.org> <87myz2i9tj.fsf@jurta.org> <87r6ocx0tk.fsf_-_@jurta.org> <87d4zuyvn6.fsf@gmx.de> <87fy4prmdf.fsf@jurta.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1182296494 15903 80.91.229.12 (19 Jun 2007 23:41:34 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 23:41:34 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org, Oliver Scholz To: rms@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Wed Jun 20 01:41:31 2007 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1I0nKB-0007Sq-9y for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Wed, 20 Jun 2007 01:41:27 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1I0nKA-0007jX-IN for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Tue, 19 Jun 2007 19:41:26 -0400 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1I0nK3-0007hh-JC for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 19 Jun 2007 19:41:19 -0400 Original-Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1I0nK2-0007hJ-QG for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 19 Jun 2007 19:41:19 -0400 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1I0nK2-0007hF-Fy for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 19 Jun 2007 19:41:18 -0400 Original-Received: from owls-tree.tapsellferrier.co.uk ([81.187.188.218] helo=owls-house.tapsellferrier.co.uk) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS-1.0:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1I0nK0-0005wG-IR; Tue, 19 Jun 2007 19:41:17 -0400 Original-Received: from nicferrier.tapsellferrier.co.uk ([172.31.50.1] helo=localhost) by owls-house.tapsellferrier.co.uk with esmtp (Exim 4.60 #1 (Debian)) id 1I0nFX-0007jC-Vg; Wed, 20 Jun 2007 00:36:40 +0100 Original-Received: by localhost (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 6CC55C06E7; Wed, 20 Jun 2007 00:40:31 +0100 (BST) In-Reply-To: (Richard Stallman's message of "Tue\, 19 Jun 2007 18\:25\:24 -0400") X-detected-kernel: Genre and OS details not recognized. X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:73362 Archived-At: Richard Stallman writes: > To save files as RTF does not require that we use the structured > nesting features of RTF. We want to be able to read such RTF files, > and when doing som we can either flatten the structure or record it by > means of markup text (effectively, open and close braces in the text > itself). That's interesting. You see emacs buffers as a primary contruct in the implementation of a word processor. I'd prefer to be talking about something other than RTF, say OpenDoc, because it is acutally more useful now than RTF. I'm not an expert, but I've done a little hacking with OpenDoc. It is an XML format but comes wrapped up in a zip file. In otherwords if I give you my CV in OpenDoc I'm giving you a zip file with a number of XML files in it. There always seems to be one XML file with the content of the document in it. It consists of a number of logical style definitions followed by markup describing the content of the document and applying styles. Here's a little bit of content from the top of an OpenDoc document: Nic Ferrier Nic Ferrier - Curriculum Vitae Nic is a hacker. It's mostly gobbledegook, as you can see. Checking the schema for OpenDoc I note that most of the above (the office:forms element and the text:sequence-decls element) is optional. Now, an emacs textual representation of a styled document would seem to be a really useful thing to have. This would be capable of attaching styles to text via properties. The styles would come from one of a number of sets of predefined styles; there might be an HTML set or an OpenDoc set. The definition of a style would have to be very loose. Probably just a text string as an identifier and then something attached to the text string. Then we could write importers to the styled form and "displayers" of the styled form, like the current emacs rich text mode. The styles would be defined by the import/export programs and the "displayer". It would be a start. I think such a plan would require nxml-mode, at least James Clark's xmltok lisp library which comes with nxml-mode. -- Nic Ferrier http://www.tapsellferrier.co.uk